'Anti-malarial for mosquitoes': The British scientist behind a major malaria breakthrough
Exclusive: Compounds identified that could prevent mosquitoes from spreading the disease
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Your support makes all the difference.In his office, Professor Jake Baum drinks his tea, strong with no milk, while talking about his frantic morning. His day, like any other, starts with rushing around the family home, ensuring everyone is prepared for the day ahead and running on time.
Like many working fathers, along with his wife he shares the duties of dropping his children off at school before making his way into work. A casual bystander would be forgiven for not realising that Prof Baum is at the forefront of what could be an unprecedented breakthrough in eradicating malaria.
His job, as the head of a laboratory group at Imperial College London, puts him at the heart of the battle to reach the global target of eradicating malaria by the year 2040 and his team have just made a discovery which could ultimately halt the spread of the fatal disease.
Young children and pregnant women are particularly prone to the disease and the majority of the global burden of malaria falls on sub-Saharan Africa. In 2016 there were 216 million cases and it killed 445,000 people, making it one of the leading killers on the continent, according to the most recent figures from the World Health Organisation.
In conjunction with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), his team of researchers have made a major breakthrough in identifying compounds which they believe could prevent mosquitoes from spreading the disease.
The parasite responsible for malaria follows a complex life cycle, beginning when an infected mosquito bites a human. The parasite then grows and multiples in the human host, with symptoms ultimately arising from the invasion and rupturing of red blood cells.
While traditional preventions and treatments target the parasite within the human, Prof Baum is largely concentrating on the prevention of transmission by looking at the infection of the mosquito. When feeding on a malaria-infected individual, an uninfected mosquito can obtain the disease to then pass it on to someone else - making it a carrier.
Once in the mosquito, the parasite transforms to cells which almost resemble the sperm and the egg. The resulting reproduction of the parasite within the mosquito means that when the infected insect feeds on another human, they are now primed to pass on the disease.
‘This has opened our eyes to fundamental biological processes that occur during transmission but do not occur at any moment in the rest of the life cycle of the parasite’
In what Prof Baum describes as a “light bulb moment”, his group of researchers have discovered transmission blocking compounds which interrupt the reproduction of the parasite within the mosquito.
He jokingly describes the discovery as an “anti-malarial for mosquitoes” which if successful could prevent disease spread across the human population.
His team screened 70,000 compounds, which are small molecules that are able to regulate biological processes, using a revolutionary technique in which more than 300 compounds could simultaneously be tested for transmission blocking activity at once.
By rigorously testing each of the thousands of compounds, emulating the conditions inside a mosquito to determine which compounds might block transmission, they found three that were effective in halting parasite reproduction.
“We have to trick the malaria parasite and make it think it is inside the mosquito. We drop the temperature, lower the pH, and add a few extra factors. The parasite then transforms and becomes active and forms a sperm and egg,” he tells The Independent.
“By miniaturising this approach onto an automated microscope we have managed to screen thousands of drugs that stop the reproductive process inside the mosquito.
“In doing so, this has opened our eyes to fundamental biological processes that occur during transmission but do not occur at any moment in the rest of the life cycle of the parasite.”
Improvements to diagnosis, preventative interventions and treatments have aided the battle thus far, but the existing frontline antimalarial is currently threatened by the emergence of drug resistance – which has resulted in a shift in the research agenda towards targeting transmission.
Eradication is only feasible if transmission can be prevented which is one of the core focuses of Prof Baum’s group.
His work comes from a passion of both wanting to make a difference and like the scientists of old, asking questions to satisfy his curiosity.
This is something he has inherited from his father, esteemed scientist Professor David Baum, the former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and a member of the General Medical Council.
In 1968 Professor Baum Sr invented a heat-preserving foil sheet – the “Silver Swaddler” – used to this day to protect vulnerable premature babies immediately after birth from the devastatingly detrimental effects of rapid heat loss.
Eight years later he shared in inventing the Human Milk Pasteuriser, extending the benefits of breast milk to premature babies.
His work has helped countless people and Prof Baum Jr recounts an anecdote his father shared with him some time ago: “A young child was walking along a beach front when he spotted thousands of starfish left stranded at low tide in the midday sun.
“In an attempt to save them, the child picked up one starfish at a time, throwing each back into the sea only to be stopped by a passer-by.
“Bemused, the man asked the child what he was doing: ‘There are thousands of starfish; throwing one back will not make a difference.’
“In childlike exuberance, the youngster looked at the starfish in her hand, and whilst throwing it back said: ‘Yes, but it will make a difference to this one’.”
Prof Baum Jr argues that while saving each starfish is hugely important, finding ways to protect the entire starfish population is just as great a challenge.
That is exactly the ethos he applies to his work on malaria, and if the progress in his laboratory continues eradication will not just be a target but a real possibility.
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